Used to DM a LOT of Robotech campaigns with some Rifts on the side. My fondest PnP memories are in the OWoD series of games by White Wolf.
oWoD, or nWoD ... I've never had a good experience with playing in WW games. All but one, became so negative within a half-dozen sessions, that I just had to walk away.
In the beginning ...oWoD Werewolf (1E); chronicle theme was "Rite of Passage", we were all kids/cubs. The Rites went wrong, and we ended up stranded far from home with no teachers or mentors, having to make our own way home.
I made a Child of Gaia theurge, human-born, and a total city kid (who never even
pondered where meat came from, except "the grocery store"). Completely unlike myself, the boy was absolutely
godlike with riddles and the like (Int 5 specialised in memory, Enigmas 5 specialised in logic puzzles). And unlike most garou, he was about as useless in combat as a garou COULD be.
First major riddle-based test comes up (typical "stranger in the night", who's really a major local spirit, but we the characters don't know that). Storyteller offers larger renown awards if we don't use dice, so I pretty much sit it out, until everyone else concedes defeat. I pick up my ten dice, and ask the ST for the target number ... and he then shuts out the use of dice
at all.
Despite having specifically discussed my goals and concept for the character, and my own total personal inability to solve riddles.
*sigh* I didn't even bother showing up the next week. Why bother? Tons of character-gen resources blown on something I'd never be able to actually do ... bah.
Two for the show:oWoD Vampire game, 2E. Storyteller stresses to us again and again that Vampire is "a politis and social maneuver game, not a combat-fest". I made a Malkavian, who thought his Sire was Jack the Ripper (may or may not have been the truth), and thought he was Jack's "heir" or successor. Serious hate-on for women, a psychotic misogynist with a doctor's bag full of sharp implements. Actually had to consume the internal organs of his victims, to get blood points.
Background ended up being that we had been sent (in cargo, by air freight) for one reason or another to Boston, for various reasons specific to each character. (Mine, was because the heat from mortal police agencies was getting a bit too much in his home city .... London, of course. ^_^)
First scene? The godlike GMPC blowing away four Garou elders.
Next scene? Describing how the entire human population is dead or evacuated. Yeah, um ... ST? One blood point per day? And I need organs from the recently-deceased, or better still-living? HELLO?
The final straw? Discovering a Sabbat safehouse; infiltrating it with backup, but when I step out - under Obfuscate 3, Red Jack's sole "major schtick" - I get pot-shotte in the head for 10 or 12 aggravated damage.
By a fellow party member, who didn't even have a single dot in Auspex.
I didn'tbother showing up the next week for THAT one, either. *sigh*
Third time's the charm:nWoD game, Vampire again. New ST, who also emphasises the social-and-political core of the chronicle he wants to run. I made a Nosferatu, part of ... oh, whatsit, the Dragon-society-thingie. He was an alchemist ... and, a vampire
vintner. Yes, ghouled plants, FTW. (I got a BIG haven, and a decent pool of Herd, and said to the ST: "the Herd feeds the plants, indirectly" ... ^_^
What eventually happens? I, my g/f's "french debutant" socialite, my reclusive vintner, and the other character are sent to
conduct a home invasion, against heavily armed persons who may or may not be sabbat.
I was dead within fifty seconds. Shotgun blast to the face.
Because I didn't make a brujah combat-monster.I didn't bother showing up the next week for THAT game, either.
...
...
It will probably be a cold night in hell, before I ever try an oWoD or nWoD chronicle again. Three different games, years apart, under three different STs. And each one ended in disaster, because the ST decided to go completely off the rails. *SIGH*
Take Johnny Mnemonic, plus Blade Runner. Then add in elves, dwarves, orks, and trolls (all born originally from human parents, so, all considered to be subraces of Homo Sapiens; elves are Homo Sapiens Nobilis, for example). Also toss in rare-but-REAL magic, along with things like Dragons (one of hte biggest corporations is owned by a Great Western Dragon; his name is Lofwyr; also, another Great Western Dragon, Dunkelzan, was elected president ... then assassinated shortly afterwards).
Metahumans don't follow typical fantasy schticks, though. Dwarves are just people - short, hairy, robust people with natural themographic vision, but people, nonetheless. Oh, and, no green-skinned Orks or the like. Same skin and hair colors as humans.
Dwarves and Elves are born that way, all of them. The first generation or three of Orks and Trolls, though? Born human, then
changed into Orks or Trolls. In a long, painful process, too. That happens only very very rarely nowadays, though - 4E is set sixty years after "the Awakening", so almost all Orks and Trolls are born as Orks or Trolls.
Redraw the political map, especially in North America (no more U.S.A., and especially no more "sea to shining sea" - the Native American Nations, "NAN", took the territory west of the Mississippi, and a big chunk of Canada too. Being demonstrably able to cause, via major magic, multiple volcanoes to
simultaneously violently erupt without the slightest warning, kind of helped.
What was left of Canada, except Quebec, merged with what was left of the US to form the UCAS, "United Canadian and American States" (they also got to keep Seattle and it's immediate environs, as a Pacific port). That then split, right along the Mason-Dixon line - the north remained the UCAS, the south became the CAS ... yes, you guessed it, "Confederated American States".
Now add in a VR-based internet, called "the Matrix" (predates the movie of the same name by decades, btw), and all that implies - a la Gibson's
Neuromancer.
And that, in anutshell, is Shadowrun. There's more to it, of course; that's a seriously quick-dip-at-the-trot TL;DR summary of it all. But, it should give you a taste of what you've been missing.